Courtesy of Byron Harmon, Banff
WHERE THE HANGING GLACIER IS ABOUT TO FALL
Then the packer registered “fresh meat hunger” (“cut-in” of a butcher shop to be made later), immediately after which the guide pointed to the cliffs above the camp where some wild goats were frisking. By the aid of his long-distance lens, Harmon had shot the goats as they would appear through the binoculars the guide and packers excitedly passed back and forth between them. And now they were going forth to shoot the goats. Or rather they were going forth to “shoot” the goats, for these had already been shot with a rifle. In order to avoid loss of time in packing his cumbersome apparatus about over the cliffs, Harmon had sent out Conrad, his Swiss guide, the previous afternoon, with orders to shoot a goat—as fine a specimen as possible—and leave it in some picturesque spot where a re-shooting could be “shot” with the camera when the clouds lifted. The keen-eyed Tyrolese had experienced little difficulty in bringing down two goats. One of these—a huge “Billy”—he had left at the brink of a cliff a couple of thousand feet above the big glacier, and the other—a half-grown kid—he had brought into camp to cut up for the “meat-guzzling” shots with which guide, packer and canine were to indulge in as a finale. It was a cleverly conceived “nature” picture, one with a distinct “educational” value; or at least it was such when viewed from “behind the camera.” Roos was plainly jealous over it, but, as he had no goats of his own, and as Harmon’s goat was hardly likely to be “borrowable” after bouncing on rock pinnacles for a thousand feet, there was nothing to do about it. He would have to make up by putting it over Harmon on his “glacier stuff,” he said philosophically. And he did; though it was only through the virtuosity of his chief actor.
Harmon had confined his glacier shots to one of his party riding up over the rocks, and another of it grouped at the entrance of the largest cave and looking in. Being an old mountaineer, he was disinclined to take any unnecessary chances in stirring up a racket under hanging ice. Roos was new to the mountains, so didn’t labour under any such handicap. His idea was to bring the whole outfit right up the middle of the stream and on into the cave. The approach and the entrance into the mouth of the cave were to be shot first from the outside, and then, in silhouette, from the inside.
Nixon, pointing out that the roof of the cave had settled two or three feet since we were there yesterday and that the heat seemed to be honeycombing all the lower end of the glacier pretty badly, said that he didn’t like the idea of taking horses inside, but would do so if it would make a better picture that way. He was quite willing to take chances if there was any reason for it. But what he did object to was trying to take the horses up the middle of the stream over big boulders when it would be perfectly plain to any one who saw the picture that there was comparatively smooth going on either side. “You can easy break a hawss’ leg in one of them geesly holes,” he complained; “but the loss of a hawss isn’t a patch to what I’d feel to have some guy that I’ve worked with see the pictur’ and think I picked that sluiceway as the best way up.”
Roos replied with a rush of technical argument in which there was much about “continuity” and “back-lighting,” and something about using the “trick crank so that the action can be speeded up when it’s run.” Not knowing the answer to any of this, Nixon finally shrugged his shoulders helplessly and signalled for Jim to bring up the horses. There was no need of a “trick crank” to speed up the action in the stream, for that glacial torrent, a veritable cascade, had carried away everything in its course save boulders four or five feet high. Nixon, in a bit of a temper, hit the ditch as though he were riding a steeplechase. So did Jim and Gordon. All three of them floundered through without mishap. “Grayback” tried to climb up on the tip of a submerged boulder, slipped with all four feet at once and went over sidewise. I kicked out my stirrups, but hit the water head first, getting considerably rolled and more than considerably wet. To Roos’ great indignation, this occurred just outside the picture, but he had the delicacy not to ask me to do it over again.
Taking the horses inside the cave was a distinctly ticklish performance, though there could be no question of its effectiveness as a picture. Roos set up a hundred feet in from the fifty-feet-wide, twenty-feet-high mouth and directed us to ride forward until a broad splashing jet of water from the roof blocked our way, and then swing round and beat it out. “Beat it out snappy!” he repeated. “Get me?” “Yep, I got you,” muttered Nixon; “you’re in luck if nothin’ else does.”
The ice that arched above the entrance looked to me like the salt-eaten packing round an ice-cream can as we pushed up and under it. The horses could hardly have noticed this, and it must have been their instincts—their good sound horse-sense—that warned them that a dark hole full of hollow crackings and groanings and the roar of falling water was no place for self-respecting equines to venture. It took a deal of spurring and swearing to force them inside, and most of the linear distance gained was covered in circles on their hind legs. It was old “Grayback” whose nerves gave way first; he that started the stampede back to light and sunshine. There was no question but what we “beat it snappy.”
Roos came out rubbing his hands gleefully. “That photographed like a million dollars,” he cried with enthusiasm. “Now just one thing more....” And forthwith he revealed what had been in his heart ever since he chanced onto that “natural shower bath” in the cave the previous afternoon. No one could deny that it was a natural shower bath. And since it was a natural shower bath, what could be more natural than for some one to take a shower under it? How would Nixon feel about trying it? Or Jim? He admitted that it might be something of a shock, but he was willing to make that all right. Would ten dollars be fair? Or say twenty? Or why not twenty-five? He knew Mr. Chester didn’t reckon cost when it was a question of getting a high class, he might say a unique, picture. Now which should it be? Nixon, a bit snappily, said his rheumatism put him out of the running, and Jim was equally decided. Money wouldn’t tempt him to go even into the Columbia at Windermere, let alone a liquid icicle under a glacier.